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The Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Catapult, in collaboration with Oxford MEStar and AK (Suzhou) Biomedical, has announced they have been awarded a grant from the Innovate UK-Jiangsu Industrial Challenge Programme, a project set up by Innovate UK and Jiangsu Science and Technology Department to stimulate economic growth, and foster ties between China and the UK.

Through the grant, CGT Catapult, Oxford MEStar (UK), a bioengineering company specializing in process automation for the regenerative medicine and cell therapy sector, and AK (Suzhou) Biomedical (China), a biotech firm specializing in products and services for clinical applications aim to support the development of a novel manufacturing system intended to dramatically reduce the cost of production of CAR-T therapy, a highly promising cancer treatment.

CAR-T therapies are novel immunotherapy treatments derived from a patient’s own T-cells and genetically modified to combat cancer. Although highly innovative, CAR-T therapies can cost up to US$500,000 per treatment, due to reasons including the complex development and manufacture of these specialized cells, which subsequently could place strain on modern healthcare budgets and systems.

Focusing on addressing this issue, the proposed system will reduce costs by utilizing automation, to cut down on labor costs, and ensure maximum efficiency and quality whilst maintaining high good manufacturing practice standards. Existing systems currently suffer from high equipment and consumables costs, and heightened failure rate due to ‘open’ processes.

“This project represents a significant milestone as our first collaboration with a Chinese organization. It is also an excellent opportunity for us to deploy our expertise in manufacturing automation….we hope that with this novel manufacturing system we can reduce the cost of these treatments and make this ground-breaking therapy more accessible to patients,” commented Keith Thompson, CEO, Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult.

“Our relationship with the Chinese partner AK (Suzhou) Biomedical has already led to the development of an automated cell expansion system for cell therapy applications. This new grant strengthens our core engineering technology development and widens our collaboration with our UK partner CGT Catapult working together with AK (Suzhou) Biomedical,” continued Zhanfeng Cui, Founder, Oxford MEStar.

The three partners in the project will bring together their expertise and capabilities to progress the development of a scalable manufacturing solution. Oxford MEStar, a spin-out from Oxford University, will be the industrial lead in the UK and will develop the prototype of the modular bioreactor system. AK (Suzhou) Biomedical, will be the industrial lead in China and will be responsible for validating the system in a GMP environment and carrying out preproduction prototyping. CGT Catapult will provide expert design and testing of the system through exemplar immunotherapy processes, and further support development and evaluation as a scalable solution.

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